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And we’ve entered the top 30 of our Albums of the ’90s list. Spoiler alert: All of them are better than Better Than Ezra.

30. Radiohead – The Bends (1995)

In 1993, at the height of grunge’s marketability, Radiohead released “Creep,” a single that nailed the genre’s central oxymoron – self-loathing art that draws a crowd. Suddenly, these guys were getting what seemed like their 15 seconds. Except they didn’t relish their dalliance with stardom. It made them feel alienated and exhausted, to the point where they started to seriously ponder the fleeting nature of life itself. And then they made an album about that. “You can crush it, but it’s always here,” warns Thom Yorke on the opening track of The Bends, as if the reassuring swirl of Wurlitzer and guitar was the only thing keeping the reaper off his back. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood utilizes way more than his volume knob this time around, creating atmospheres of aching wonder and wanton destruction. From the consumer culture nightmares of “Fake Plastic Trees” to the raw existentialist dread of “Street Spirit,” Radiohead confront one unfixable, harrowing reality after another, while writing choruses that blot out the world. Instead of eating hot dogs like most of us do when we feel like nothing matters, they made an attempt at shared catharsis. Self-loathing had made way for selflessness.

29. Portishead – Dummy (1994)

Seattle wasn’t the only rain-spattered town to become famous for its gloomy music scene in the ’90s. Bristol, UK, was ground zero for “trip hop” – a fusion of rap, electronica and post-punk that played like the soundtrack to a Bond movie where his greatest nemesis is loneliness. In 1994, the genre landed its own Nevermind, in the form of Portishead’s bewitching debut. Dummy was a trip-hop blueprint, with an emphasis on the blue – singer Beth Gibbons confronts the day-to-day realities of depression in an absolutely haunting voice. The music fits her like a shroud. Theremins cry over echoing minor chords. Single words become garbled and transformed by bandleader Geoff Barrow’s emotive scratching. “In this moment/How can it feel this wrong?” Gibbons asks, like a forgotten spirit trying make herself heard. In that moment, you know why people decide to investigate that mysterious sound in the attic. Some part of us wants to be haunted.

28. The Beta Band – The Three E.P’s (1998)

In 1994, an album called Chant hit #3 on the Billboard charts. It featured old recordings of Spanish monks doing what the title promised, and was marketed as a surefire stress reliever. It sold two million copies. My dad had one of them. I have no idea if the Scottish “folktronica” outfit The Beta Band were Chant fans, but their music strives for a similar kind of transcendency – not exactly the status quo in indie rock back then. Over the course of three EPs, the band explored the limits of patient, circular songwriting, finding a throughline from “Alice’s Restaurant” to ambient techno – a mix of acoustic guitar strumming and entrancing electronic noise that feels like it could go on forever without losing steam. (The only artists less concerned with radio play? Those monks.) All three of these extended players were collected on this single disc, and while it did land them a minor hit with the slow-build stoner ballad “Dry the Rain,” these guys were after something deeper than mere hooks. The Beta Band didn’t just catch your ear. It absorbed you, tip to tail.

27. Mos Def – Black On Both Sides (1999)

I’m a sucker for artist autobiographies. There’s always the chance those pages contain a deeper understanding of a performer’s state of mind during the creative process – ideally resulting in an even closer relationship with their art. Rap is the only genre that regularly weaves these meta commentaries within the music itself; emcees often explain what drives them to write rhymes, how the process makes them feel, and why they’re so much better at it than you. And I can’t think of any rapper who has written about writing better than Mos Def on his solo debut. “My restlessness is my nemesis / It’s hard to really chill and sit still, committed to page / I write a rhyme, sometimes won’t finish for days / Scrutinize my literature from the large to the miniature,” he raps. He devotes a whole chorus to Rakim’s classic bars about being trapped between the lines. He wrestles with his responsibilities as an artist but decides to soldier on and follow his Umi’s advice: “Shine a light on the world.” Black On Both Sides does just that, with golden-hour production that makes samples sound like backing bands, leaping from R&B to jazz to hardcore without ever losing that comforting sheen. Fluid, openhearted, and buried deep in the pocket, it’s got all I ever need to know.

26. Mariah Carey – Mariah Carey (1990)

It started with one note. A strange, reverberating synthesizer, drawing us in like a UFO tractor beam. Then the chimes tinkle, the vocals do a melismatic dance, and we’re there, swaying to the timeless doo-wop melody of Mariah Carey’s first single, “Vision of Love.” To an aspiring R&B singer at the time, that note must have felt like the X marking the spot of their way forward, their opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night.” The song, and the self-titled album it anchored, introduced Carey as a writer and singer with an innate ability to craft worldbeating hits from R&B and gospel ingredients. Her fingerprints have been all over pop music ever since – Beyoncé has credited “Vision of Love” with inspiring her to do vocal runs. That powerhouse of a voice naturally gets all the attention, elevating this record’s twinkling Whitney arrangements into something more profoundly human. But Mariah Carey remains a spine-tingling listen because of the crispness and unexpectedness of the writing – like “Someday,” with its finger-wagging prognostications of regret. Or “It’s All In Your Mind,” which rubs Tiger Balm onto a partner’s trust issues. Or the closer, “Love Takes Time,” which features a narrator that didn’t follow the lesson of the song title, staring in the mirror, trying to forgive themselves. Three of the four songs I’ve mentioned here were #1 hits. This was pop music that gave you so much more, right from note one.

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Has any pop star generated an instant wave of baseless skepticism like Cardi B has? Such was the power of “Bodak Yellow,” her spell-casting swagger bomb of a debut single. The Bronx rapper made all kinds of self-fulfilling prophecies about how much richer and smarter and stronger she was than you. You know, like every rapper does. But there was something about Cardi, rapping lines like “I’m a boss / You a worker bitch,” that made Twitter and message board trolls crank up the old “new popular artist is a fraud” machine.

Why couldn’t everyone just enjoy this dominating new talent that came out of nowhere? Well, kinda because she came out of nowhere. Cardi B’s rise has broken all kinds of unwritten rules about how rap stars are made. She didn’t build a grassroots following by selling mixtapes out of her trunk – she got Internet famous from her real-talk Instagram posts about life as a stripper. She didn’t break into TV with an iconic rap video – she got cast in the sixth season of the rap industry-adjacent reality show Love and Hip Hop. Oh, and did I mention she’s a woman? The rules for female rappers are written to ensure either total failure or the loss of street cred. You can either try to be a “real rapper” and go hard 24/7, which keeps you off the pop charts. Or you can try for pop hits and get labeled a fake. Cardi had the biggest hit of the year by any metric – she’s only the second solo female rapper ever to hit #1 – with a track that starts with the line “You can’t fuck with me.” What’s gonna rile up sexists more than an ex-stripper kicking their rigged system in the dick?

So by the time Cardi finally released her debut album, it needed to check off an absurd amount of boxes. Invasion of Privacy had to prove that “Bodak” was no fluke. It had to go hard to satisfy the heads, yet also give glimpses of vulnerability that male rappers don’t have to worry about. It had to give the artist’s perspective on any number of highly publicized stories – her unorthodox rise to stardom; her marriage to the rapper Offset; that roiling sea of haters. And it also had to be a traditional major label smash, full of guest artists that complement but never outshine, on one potential hit after another. It had to prove that Cardi B is one of the best emcees and one of the most magnetizing pop stars.

It’s incredibly satisfying to hear her pull it off.

Track one, “Get Up 10,” is that fiery, look-at-me-I-can-rap, middle-finger-to-the-haters song she shouldn’t have to make. But it’s more than that too. It’s her goddamn superhero origin story.

Look, they gave a bitch two options: strippin’ or loseUsed to dance in a club right across from my schoolI said “dance” not “fuck,” don’t get it confused
Had to set the record straight ’cause bitches love to assume

Right there, in her first stanza, is a crystal clear look at the choices this artist had to make, and the adversity she’s had to endure because of them. It’s hip hop storytelling at its best. And when delivered in Cardi’s live-wire Bronx sneer, it lands with authority.

By establishing her rap bona fides on the opener, Cardi is able to focus her efforts on making her album a hit. Instead of staying in her comfort zone of bass-throbbing, cracked-cement NYC hip hop, she dips her toes in all the styles of the moment, her lyrical flow and storytelling ability entertaining enough to be the lone connective tissue through it all. She drops jewel-encrusted knowledge on Atlanta trap earworms alongside Migos and 21 Savage; takes Chance the Rapper along on a sunny-day-in-Chicago reverie, and slays a DJ Mustard beat like a smoked-out Angeleno. It’s an absolute gauntlet, and she makes it sound like a party.

Those unfair expectations of vulnerability are met, and then some, by the single “Be Careful,” where the rapper unloads on a cheating boyfriend over light, dancing organ chords: “She don’t even know your middle name / Watch her ’cause she might steal your chain.” “Thru Your Phone” reveals the flipped-script origin of the album title, as Cardi invades her man’s privacy by going through his phone and realizes she was right to be suspicious.

Then there’s “I Like It.” This is precisely the kind of track that naysayers would point to as a shameless chart grab, like they did when Nicki Minaj put out her underrated Sir Mix-a-Lot reboot, “Anaconda.” A direct lift of the Pete Rodriguez hit “I Like It Like That,” the track has a naturally invigorating Latin groove. Cardi builds on that feeling by bringing in Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny and Colombian reggaeton singer J Balvin. And like she does all over Invasion of Privacy, she outperforms her talented guests, going reverse Chief Keef and listing things she likes: “I like texts from my exes when they want a second chance / I like proving n****s wrong, I do what they say I can’t,” she raps triumphantly. As the expensive sample plays underneath, on an album that methodically disproves every unfounded criticism of her abilities and positions her as the ideal crossover rapper of 2018, you’d have to be willfully ignorant to disagree.

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Much has been written about the influence of drugs on popular music, from the effects of LSD on The Beatles to the role lean may have played in Future’s transformation into a glassy-eyed hedonist. But no substance has ever affected a musician the way falling in love does. Like ecstasy, it filters out cynicism. Like weed, it slows everything down. Like heroin, it makes you sick when it’s gone. Love is artistic steroids. And ladies and gentlemen, Kacey Musgraves is juicing.

“Oh what a world / Don’t wanna leave / There’s all kinds of magic / It’s hard to believe,” sings the Texas singer/songwriter on one of the many standout love songs that form the spine of her nearly flawless third album, Golden Hour. For all its grandiosity, the song – “Oh What a World” – never feels the least bit trite. Because Musgraves has no time for sunsets. The “magic” she feels is like seeing the Aurora Borealis, or a sea creature that emits an otherworldly neon glow. “These are real things,” she marvels.

Golden Hour is largely about these “real things.” In fact, its songwriting is so focused, it makes me realize how so many of our idioms for romance have to do with not seeing straight, or losing our balance. Clichéd love makes us “starry-eyed.” It “knocks us off our feet.” It makes us “crazy about” someone.Musgraves approaches the subject from a variety of angles, from the lovely ache of missing someone to the frightening joy of trusting them. And her vision never blurs. “I used to be scared of the wilderness, of the dark,” she sings. “But not anymore.”

This clarity is also evident in the production choices made by Musgraves and collaborators Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian. It’s based in the honeyed pop-country gloss that defined her first two records – banjos are little more than signifiers, fiddles play second fiddle – but takes some exhilarating liberties. “High Horse” is a swirling disco anthem that feels like a friendly gauntlet thrown to Kylie Minogue, whose new Nashville-produced album also just came out (in a further bit of kismet, it’s called Golden). “Oh What a World” weaves a chorus of robotic voices into its National Geographic expedition. “Slow Burn” introduces a string motif that waxes and wanes like something off of Beck’s Sea Change album.

Yet for all its immaculate sonic details and instant-classic turns of phrase – e.g. “You can have your space, cowboy” – Golden Hour is great because it has good timing on its side. Kacey Musgraves is at her peak as an artist, and also happens to be going through a kaleidoscopically life-changing experience. The moment that moves me the most might be the simplest and most straightforward of them all. It’s the very last line of the album, on the piano ballad “Rainbow.” The band drops away, and it’s just Musgraves, at her piano, telling her love the one thing we all want to hear: “It’ll all be alright.”

Here are the next five entries in my seemingly never-ending Top 100 Albums of the 1990s – wherein we get a devil’s haircut, witness the birth of the riot grrrl movement, remember when god told Prince to stop being so funky, and more! (You can check out the full list here.)

35. Beck – Odelay (1996)

After scoring an accidental smash hit with the slacker-M.C. cut “Loser,” Beck struggled with what to do next. He recorded an entire album of dour lo-fi folk and then scrapped it, eventually opting for the other extreme – a technicolor patchwork collage of golden age hip hop and singalong country that’s almost passive-aggressively catchy. He brought in The Dust Brothers (who weaponized ’70s radio hits so deftly for the Beastie Boys), to give a kitschy, sample-heavy sheen to his roots rock compositions. He wrote cryptic magnet-poetry lyrics that soundedgood, but meant nothing, making an enduring meta statement about the inherent emptiness of pop hits. He used his disdain for the mainstream to create the most universally beloved album of his career. It’s as ironic as it is iconic. Does it get more ’90s than that?

34. Bikini Kill – The CD Version of the First Two Records (1994)

When we press play on an old recording, chances are we’re going to feel some kind of distance from it. This is not the case on the first two EPs from riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill, re-released on one CD back in ’94. Kathleen Hanna leads the quartet through one 4-track punk thrasher after another, driven by the kind of unquantifiable energy that’ll have you driving 10 mph faster without realizing it. And her lyrics remain as exhilaratingly confrontational as her screams. “Does it scare you, boy, that we don’t need you?” she snarls. It’s amazing (and depressing) how relevant these songs remain. The patriarchy is still hurting us all, but the hairline fractures are getting easier to see. The louder we play this, and the more seriously we take its outrage, the faster we can watch them grow.

33. Prince – The Black Album (1994)

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to sound forced, it’s a rock star’s late-career attempt at shoring up their street cred. Unless you’re Prince, that is. In 1987, Prince made The Black Album to appease critics who accused him of selling out. It was the filthiest funk music he’d ever laid to tape, P-Funk and Sly-indebted vamps shot through with odd lyrical obsessions, with little regard for running times. He makes fun of rappers for not singing, steps into the mind of a celebrity stalker, and pitch-bends his voice to become the gun-waving chauvinist villain “Bob George.” Famously, the artist changed his mind about releasing The Black Album at the last second, convinced of its “evil” after a visit from god (or his ecstasy dealer). It sat on the shelf until 1994, when we all got to hear how wrong he was. Prince, playing funk guitar like he’s got something to prove? There is no clearer force for good.

32. Handsome Boy Modeling School – So, How’s Your Girl? (1999)

It’s gotta be hard enough for a band with multiple songwriters to deliver a clear, consistent aesthetic. But a group with two lead producers? It would seem almost impossible, given the complete control the best producers usually demand. Yet in 1999, the renowned hip hop knob-twisters Prince Paul and Dan the Automator joined forces to make an undisputed classic. So, How’s Your Girl? is many things – a silly concept album based on a Get a Life episode; a how-to manual for deploying guest artists; a summit meeting of peak ’90s rap and electronica. But most strikingly, it’s a pure distillation of the playfully deployed golden-age samples of Paul and the dramatic sci-fi soundscapes of Dan. Handsome Boy Modeling School eventually fizzled out due to artistic differences. But we’ll always have this album, and its grand, magnetized agreements.

31. Old 97’s – Fight Songs (1999)

The summer Fight Songs came out I worked at a nursery, loading cedar chips into trunks and getting odd rashes from trees. And if my boss overheard what I was singing to myself as I worked, she would’ve had to consider an intervention. “Lonely / Baby I’m not lonely / I’ve got my imaginary friends” went this record’s most inescapable chorus, the high harmonies lingering over bright, strummy production. I could’ve used better friends back then, it’s true. But this was a case of whistling while you work – Fight Songs remains one of the catchiest damn things I’ve ever heard. Few artists have been able to take typical country-western themes of despair and simultaneously heal them through melody like this. Rhett Miller didn’t add an ounce of grit to his vocals, lending sincerity to sad-sack anthems like “Busted Afternoon,” “Jagged” and the aforementioned “Lonely Holiday.” The walls might’ve been closing in, but the ceiling was opening up.

Hello, Oscar junkies! We’re only two days away from that global TV event that’s just like the Super Bowl, except you watch what’s in between the commercials instead! Usually this is the place where I bemoan the bland/whitewashed/Hollywood-worshipping nature of the odds-on favorite. But I have some reasons to be hopeful this year, and goddammit I’m gonna make the most of it.

Reason #1: Upsets are a thing now

For two years running, the expected winner has lost. Spotlight beat out The Revenant in 2016, and last year, Moonlight upset La La Land.

Reason #2: Celebrating diversity in Hollywood is kinda sorta starting to become a thing now

It would be ignorant to expect Academy voters to be seriously swayed by the #TimesUp, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. One Moonlight nod does not erase 89 years of American Beautys. But notions of equal representation in film have never been so prominent. An optimist could assume that in this revolutionary new context, one might think twice about voting for Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, the movie version of every think piece that told us we need to empathize with blue-collar Trump voters.

Reason #3: Reasons to have Oscar optimism don’t come along every day.

I’m still smarting from Crash beating Brokeback Mountain over here. So let me have my moment and predict a win for Get Out, the most relevant, intensely entertaining movie I saw in 2017. I really think it will happen! What the hell is wrong with me?

While I’m surfing this newfound wave of Oscars optimism (a.k.a. “riding the golden man”), why not talk about the movies that I’d nominate for Best Picture? Here’s the list, in alphabetical order:

Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Name looks like how falling in love feels. Luca Guadagino’s sumptuous coming-of-age story wrenches every drop of chlorophyll out of its Italian countryside setting. As our main character Elio finds strength, encouragement, and exhilarating joy in his budding relationship with his father’s assistant Oliver, Guadagino fills our eyes with lush vegetation, fresh water and bountiful fruit. Their happiness is palpable, and Elio’s father notices. And what he eventually tells his son is a lesson in how all such love should be treated – as a precious resource, given all the freedom in the world to grow.

A Dark Song

This slow-burn Irish horror film is like its protagonist Sophia – determined, patient, and in search of something extraordinary. Writer/director Liam Gavin spends a majority of his first feature letting us wonder about the schlubby occultist hired by Sophia to summon her guardian angel, using a real-life ritual called the Abramelin Operation. Is it all for real? Or is he just some creep? When we finally get our answer, so does Sophia, who rises like a phoenix from her grief, surrounded by a level of visual splendor that must’ve taken a lot of willpower to save for the end.

Get Out

Every horror fan has found themselves urging a character to leave the dark basement/ancient burial ground/abandoned mental hospital they’re bravely wandering around in. In Jordan Peele’s prescient “social thriller” Get Out, that dangerous, haunted place is America. It’s the story of Chris, a black man meeting his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time. What happens on this family’s finely manicured home turf is a terrifying, crystal clear allegory for our country’s twisted obsession with the cultural and physical appropriation of an entire race. In this idyllic little hamlet, there are most definitely not very good people on both sides.

Happy Death Day

“What if Groundhog Day was a slasher movie?” sounds like one lazy-ass pitch. But that perfectly describes Happy Death Day, which turned out to bea clever rumination on the weight of social pressure on young people. As our main character Tree finds herself in a time loop that always ends in murder, she gains more self-confidence with each repeated day. She’s more true to herself in public; she takes time to process her grief; she investigates, and successfully unmasks, her murderer. Refreshingly unpredictable, empathetic and self-aware, this is something I’d happily experience again. And again.

John Wick: Chapter 2

Gone are the days of Commando, where the relationship between John Matrix and his daughter is established by the end of the opening credits, leaving as much time as possible for quippy, campy carnage. But the second installment of the John Wick series contains some echoes of that 1980sno-nonsense muscle. Keanu Reeves returns as the titular grieving husband and dog lover, and it only takes a few minutes for him to be on the run from hundreds of highly trained, heavily armed vigilantes. It’s one extended action sequence after another, blocked with the style and precision of ballet – bodies undulating through space, armories akimbo.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Director Yorgos Lanthimos makes this list for the second year running, with this deeply disturbing tale of a troubled teen leveraging a doctor’s warped priorities to wreak havoc on his family. Lanthimos’s characters all talk in stilted, disinterested monotones, resulting in a funhouse mirror abstraction of suburban life that shifts from awkwardly hilarious to intensely chilling as the film unfolds. Barry Keoghan gives an unforgettable performance as the vengeful, blackmailing, child-poisoning Martin. Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman relish their chance to play Martin’s socially stunted victims. By the end, the story gets as dark as anything I saw in 2017, without ever striking a tone that wasn’t completely its own.

Phantom Thread

The main character of Paul Thomas Anderson’s intoxicating eighth feature is Reynolds Woodcock, the head of a couture fashion house in 1950s London. Or at least, that’s how most people see him. Until he meets a waitress in a country pub named Alma, who sees him entirely. There’s a reason why a central crisis in Phantom Thread involves a wedding dress. It’s a story about marriage, and the very specific kinds of human synergy that make the the most successful ones work. Anderson gives Alma and Reynolds a push-pull narrative that reaches a level of intensity others could see as grounds for divorce. But for this particular husband and wife, there couldn’t be anything more nourishing.

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Until Big Boi and Andre 3000 came along, it wasn’t cool for rappers to brand themselves as outsiders. They could be antiheroes, or media moguls, or poets, or rock stars – but outcasts? Aliens? Georgians? Outkast rose from the hip hop backwater of Atlanta by not pretending they were from New York. They made records with the patience of a BBQ chef, backloading them with luxuriously long, funk opuses, showcasing their love for George Clinton more deeply than Dr. Dre ever could. They exuded confidence on the mic by being themselves, rapping in rapid-fire triplets over organically produced funk and R&B compositions, establishing Southern rap as we know it. Even their failures were bold and individualistic, like Andre’s off-key Prince impression/electro-jazz opus The LoveBelow.It’s no coincidence that rap artists have reveled in being different ever since. Lil Wayne is “not a human being.” Young Thug rocks designer parasols and celebrates Slime Season. Migos tops the charts while dressed like 19th century fur trappers. Largely because of these two dope boys in a cadillac, who scored a massive hit by bragging, “I am for real.”

Here are the 10 best Outkast songs, now and forever until the inevitable comeback album. Playlist below.

10. “Git Up Git Out” (1994, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik)

This Southern-fried, horn-fueled triumph from Outkast’s debut is the funkiest self-help seminar of all time: “You need to git up, git out and git something / How will you make it if you never even try?”

9. “Aquemini” (1998, Aquemini)

On a song that uses a portmanteau of the rapper’s Zodiac signs as its title, they expound on the impermanence of it all, over a cascading opiate of a groove. You never want it to end. But like everything, it does.

8. “Da Art of Storytellin’, Part 1” (1998, Aquemini)

Boasting a hypnotic, descending melody that aliens should use to calm us upon arrival, this song also delivers on the promise of its title, especially when Andre 3000 fits an entire tragic story arc in one verse.

7. “Elevators (Me and You)” (1996, ATLiens)

“We done come a long way like those long-ass cigarettes,” shares Andre on “Elevators,” the first truly special Outkast single. The beat doesn’t slap; it sinks into a cavern of reverb, making this reflection on success sound more like a séance than a celebration.

6. “I’ll Call Before I Come” (2000, Stankonia)

To this day, the idea of a man being a considerate lover does not jive with our toxic, “they only care about one thing” concept of masculinity. Yet 18 years ago, Outkast teamed up with Three Six Mafia’s Gangsta Boo to make a witty, boisterous summer jam about putting your partner’s pleasure first. The older it gets, the more incredible it sounds.

5. “Babylon” (1996, ATLiens)

This harrowing, slinky masterpiece of mood is drenched in lapsed Catholicism. As Andre outlines how religion demonizes sexuality and Big Boi takes down every preacher that blames rappers for crime waves, the background vocals ominously hum.

4. “The Whole World” (2001, Big Boi and Dre Present … Outkast)

In 2001, Big Boi and Dre were on top of the world. But on this single, they were also feeling the weight of it. Over a careening carnival beat, they vented about the appropriation of black culture, and the extremist hatred that the 2000 presidential election did nothing to quell. Dre’s opening lines are as honest as a hit song ever gets: “Yeah I’m afraid / Like I’m scared as a dog / But I’ve got a new song / And I want y’all to sing along.”

3. “So Fresh, So Clean” (2000, Stankonia)

Unlike most of their peers, Outkast wasn’t in the myth-building business. They just rapped about how they felt, whether that was vulnerable, or proud, or sexy. So when they claimed “ain’t nobody dope as me” over a slick-as-hell Joe Simon sample, we believed them. That’s the kind of self-confidence that catches.

2. “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” (1998, Aquemini)

Here is where we started to wonder if the alien metaphors were metaphors after all. This otherworldly seven-minute slow jam blurs the line between rap and spoken word, exhaling between verses with a horn arrangement that dances up our spines, on the way to flooding our pleasure sensors. We hear Andre talk about a drunken night at the club, and Big Boi opine for the mother of his child – “Her neck was smelling sweeter / Than a plate of yams with extra syrup.” The vibe was so relaxed, it almost made us feel like we were spending time with these guys, finding out what was on their minds as they so casually blew ours away.

1. “B.O.B.” (2000, Stankonia)

Outkast’s best song is fueled by an almost dangerous level of energy. “B.O.B.” is a sky-splitting sonic boom; when it’s over, you can smell the ozone. Its beat is a monster that would swallow up most rappers – snare hits spray the vicinity like AK-47s while a pipe organ soundtracks the funeral of our preconceptions. What a thrill it is to hear Andre 3000 and Big Boi enter this maelstrom and tame it. “Like a million elephants and silverback orangutans, you can’t stop a train,” flexes Dre, perfectly describing the breathtaking energy, speed and dexterity on display. Many of the songs on this list could be described as “electrifying.” This one could power the Eastern seaboard.

So you’ve read my Top 20 Albums of 2017 and find yourself wanting more. Here you go, person who doesn’t exist! It’s my Top 25 Songs of 2017. My all-time favorite songwriter is on here. A segment from a radio show is on here. And Fergie is on here? Yes, Fergie is on here. There’s a full playlist below, after I’m done yammering.

“I banish you with love,” croons Laura Marling over one of the grooviest bass lines of the year. Getting dumped never sounded so good.

23. Young Thug – “Do U Love Me”

This preternaturally melodic rapper sings a love letter to himself over a sprightly dancehall beat, teaching us the difference between ego and self-confidence.

22. Randy Newman – “She Chose Me”

If you’re lucky enough to know how it feels to have a partner you don’t deserve, this stark ballad from our greatest living songwriter hits hard.

21. Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile – “Continental Breakfast”

Two brilliant slacker/songwriters, singing about their intercontinental friendship over a loose, rolling groove. Should be played in lieu of presidential speeches to the UN from now on.

20. CupcakKe – “Barcodes”

This sex work empowerment anthem is a blast of exuberance from a Chicago rapper on the rise. “Pay the damn price or go home to your wife,” CupcakKe demands, backed by the funkiest horns we heard all summer.

19. Bebe Rexha – “I Got You”

A pop song about building trust, with a chorus that feels like falling into somebody’s arms.

18. Brockhampton – “Gummy”

We get a few seconds of lush, harp-trilling Disney music before the plug is pulled, the feedback squeals, and rap’s most energetic crew takes off.

17. Kreator – “Side By Side”

The loudest anti-fascist music in 2017 was made by Germans. The pealing riffs and pummeling drums of “Side By Side” are almost as explosive as the rallying cries.

On paper, lyrics about breaking through the ceiling, dancing on the roof and playing with the angels are pretty cliché. But when paired with the sonic equivalent of carbonated helium, they’re perfect.

14. Nnamdi Ogbonnaya – “Hop Off”

The dive-bomb bass and chirping synths are fun enough on their own. Then one of the most elastic voices in hip hop jumps in, and we reach a whole new plane of party.

13. Thundercat – “Tokyo”

An electro-jazz-yacht-rock bass virtuoso sings about how a great vacation can bring out the kid in us: “Gonna eat so much fish I think I’m gonna be sick / Gonna blow all my cash on anime!”

12. Power Trip – “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)”

The headbanger of the year, with a riff that chugs like a locomotive from hell, and a chorus that demands to be shouted at top volume, like a bloodthirsty Queen of Hearts.

11. Big Boi – “All Night”

The still-underrated half of Outkast made this year’s anthem for the blissfully monogamous. “Hit you with your bonnet on by the nightlamp,” he raps, over a big toothy smile of a piano loop.

10. SZA – “Drew Barrymore”

This devastating breakup song was inspired by Drew Barrymore’s insecure character Josie Geller in Never Been Kissed. There’s no Hollywood ending here. But when the strings swell, so do our hopes for one.

9. Black Thought – “Hot 97 Freestyle 12/14/17”

Sometimes, nothing is flashier than stamina. Like when the voice of The Roots hopped on Funkmaster Flex’s radio show and unleashed 10 minutes of fiery, perfectly crafted bars. By the end, he was sweating. And so were we.

8. Feist – “I’m Not Running Away”

I can’t shake this tune. Bold declarations of loyalty are held up by little more than Feist’s stark, bluesy guitar. She finds a kind of rhythm that drummers can’t reach.

7. Drake – “Passionfruit”

Over a swirling dream of a dancehall groove, a narrator mourns a fading long-distance relationship. It’s emotional and entrancing – in other words, a signature Drake summer smash.

This accomplished pop songwriter has apparently saved the best material for herself – especially this starry-eyed acoustic gem that crescendos to an instant high of a chorus.

4. Calvin Harris ft. Frank Ocean & Migos – “Slide”

A smooth-as-ever Frank Ocean sings about moments when “whatever comes, comes through clear” over a breezy disco groove from Calvin Harris. Corona wishes they could bottle this.

3. Haim – “Little of Your Love”

Our finest purveyors of ’80s adult contemporary singalongs serve up a chorus so effervescent, it made this especially heavy year feel lighter.

2. Kendrick Lamar – “DNA”

Over the levitating sitar n’ bass rumble of the year’s best rap song, Kendrick Lamar brags about his ability to reach nirvana in yoga class. As his rapid-fire syllabic mastery carries us away, we get a real idea of what he’s talking about.

1. Kesha – “Woman”

TheNew York Times ran astory last Julyabout the health benefits of cursing – including stress relief and higher pain tolerance. The best song of 2017 definitely backs up these findings. When Kesha sings “I’m a motherfuckin’ woman!” punctuated by the profoundly funky Dap Kings horns, the combination of positive vibes and disregard for pop norms is exhilarating. Unlike the way our president talks, “Woman” is not vulgar. It’s defiant, and important, and very, very good for us.